Sponsored by Arkieva, your One-Plan S&OP software. Find out about Arkieva's approach to demand planning:

Benchmark your company's S&OP maturity with IBF's free-to-use S&OP maturity model. Get recommendations to improve specific areas of your process and progress to the next stage in your S&OP evolution. Try it now: https://bit.ly/33BiLSE

I talk to demand planning expert and long-time contributor to IBF's publications, Daniel Fitzpatrick. He shares how he channels his inner Bob Ross to get a handle on the art aspect of demand planning, and combining it with the science to approach demand planning as a 'craft'. Every week he gets out of the office and into stores to understand the the non-quantitative assumptions to place the numbers in context and to feed back to the sales team. Remember that as one thing becomes commoditized (the science/analytics), something else becomes a premium, and that is the art side of our profession.

02:10 Art and science in demand planning
04:25 Introducing Daniel Fitzpatrick
06:16 Why demand planners should get out of the office and into store locations
10:00 Making assumptions about competing products and how that impacts forecasts
11:00 Is your product even on the shelf?
14:00 Demand Planners and stores often work to different timescales
15:21 Taking ownership of your products
16:52 Incorporating observations at stores into your forecasting
19:00 Challenging salespeople on their assumptions
21:34 Art and science when it comes to Covid-19
28:25 Why the art element is crucial as we move into the predictive analytics age

SHOW LESS

Support the show

To sign up for regular updates and the latest research, events, articles, podcasts and more from the Institute of Business Forecasting & Training, visit www.ibf.org